Whisper Their Love Page 15

  It was while she was living with Karla that she decided to change over to men's clothes. She went to a man's barber shop and got her hair cut. "Real short, you know, he like to scalped me. Now I like this here D.A. better, it's got more style. I always wanted to be a boy from the time I was little. Boys get all the breaks. Like home, Pa always had the say about everything. Ma never got to open her yap about anything. Work, work, work all the time. It's a man's world."

  The market fired her for wearing jeans to work under the regular white apron, or maybe it was for trying to make a girl customer who looked lonesome. They never told you the real reason in those places, didn't have the guts to. "I didn't care, I was tired of the crumby job. Now I got so I feel funny with a dress on."

  She had lived with five women in all, one at a time. "I wouldn't two-time nobody." The best break she got, she said, was with Janette. Jan was a TV actress but she didn't work at it much, the competition was terrible, she was kept by a rich old guy who set her up in a ritzy apartment and came to see her twice a week regular. Tuesdays and Fridays. "He couldn't do nothing, you know, he was too old, but he sure had some funny ideas. He used to switch Jan on the behind with a little switch he had, till she bled. She didn't care. Just so's he paid the rent and the grocery bills. You know, most hookers don't really like it; it's all business with them and that's why they go gay on the side. You gotta have somebody. That Janette, she was different, she liked men and women both. Take it any way she could get it, two or three times a day, and holler for more."

  Two things she made up her mind about when she got started, she said proudly, and she'd stuck with it too. "I won't have nothing to do with a girl that uses dope. Not even tea. They tell you tea won't form a habit, but I never saw nobody stop usin' it. First they do it for kicks, then they gotta have it to feel good, then first thing you know they switched to the strong stuff. You ever see a girl with a monkey on her back? They'll do anything to get a fix then, steal or even kill somebody. I don't trust no junkie." The second thing—she wouldn't have anything to do with a streetwalker. "Like that one over there." She nodded at the bar, where the girl with the stole was drinking her third straight brandy while her friend sat watching her, not drinking herself, just watching and looking impatient. "I don't mean if a girl lives with one guy, specially if he's educated and high class. They ain't so likely to get a disease that way. You get mixed up with some common hooker, first thing you know you got a dose of the clap or something. Or that syph, that's mean, that can eat your insides right out. I don't want none of that."

  "You're a smart girl," Tarzan told her. "I'm a doctor and I know."

  "Yeah? You're damn right I'm smart."

  The two sailors at the bar looked at each other. Derision crossed their blurry adolescent faces. They stood up. "C'mon, let's go find us a place with some real women in it," one of them said. "There ought to be some real women in this town."

  "Some big shots," Bobbie said.

  Anitra asked, "Didn't you ever go to bed with a man?"

  "Sure. I'll try anything once. Didn't mean a thing to me," Bobbie said proudly. "If you're a real butch you don't get hot for men. Only sometimes they're okay to have around for buddies, like doc here. I could go for him in a strictly platonic way. Not for lovin' though—uh-uh."

  "You're so wise," Anitra said softly. Bobbie smiled at her. The smile lightened her face, gave her a pleasant, almost motherly look. "You're cute," she said. "You got real style. What you doin' in a dump like this?"

  "Just looking around."

  "See anything you like?"

  "Could be."

  Bobbie nodded. "Say, come in the John a minute, will you? There's a question I wanta ask you."

  They went out together, Anitra walking lightly in her pearl-sewn velvet slippers.

  "That's going too far," Edith Bannister said coldly. "I don't care, some people have no discrimination at all. I really mean that. I wouldn't pick up a piece of trash like that for anything."

  Tarzan scratched his fur chest. "Oh, I don't know. She's not so bad, if you like women."

  Arline patted his shoulder. "That's right, honey. You gotta be broadminded."

  The two pallid young men didn't say anything. They had pulled their straight chairs close together, and the tall one was stroking the other's leg.

  After what seemed like a long time Anitra and Bobbie came out of the room marked Ladies. Anitra leaned over the table. A wisp of hair had come loose from her sleek bun and hung down on her neck. The effect was startlingly rowdy. "I'm going over to Bobbie's place for a little while," she said to everyone in general. "She wants to show me something."

  "I bet she does," Edith said. "Will it be something you never saw before?"

  Anitra ignored that .with dignity. They went out together, pausing at the bar. "Look, Herbie," Bobbie said, "if Francie comes in, tell her I went around the corner for a cup a coffee, will you? Tell her I'll be right back and to wait for me."

  "Okay."

  Edith looked at her watch. "Well, I'm not like some of you lucky people. I have to work tomorrow. So we better push off. Can I give anybody a lift, or anything?"

  "I have to go back to Anitra's place, honey, on account of Linda's still there."

  "I don't ever want to go home," Tarzan said. "I feel crumby."

  Joyce gave them all a farewell smile, unconsciously living up to Aunt Gen's ruling that there's no excuse for bad manners. It's hard not to observe these little rituals when you've been brought up right. Tarzan waved at her, then put his head down on the table. The others ignored their going.

  The air smelled fine, even with exhaust fumes mixed in it. Edith took a good deep breath.

  "Well, that was interesting, wasn't it?"

  Her schoolteacher voice. Joyce concentrated on getting into the car and closing the door. The giddiness was gone now, but her head still ached. Be careful there, don't make her mad. "It was different," she admitted.

  "Anitra's charming, don't you think? Of course she wasn't quite herself tonight; she does drink too much at times. I wouldn't let myself go to pieces the way she does, just for a cheap thrill."

  Joyce sighed deeply. To hell with being tactful, to hell with making Edith or anybody else feel good; she was tired. The distaste that had been gathering in her all evening came to a head and broke, like a boil. "I think she's a fake. I think they're all fakes, but him, that doctor. He knows he's one. The rest of them make me feel as if I need a good hot bath and my mouth washed out with laundry soap."

  "Oh, my dear." The car slid over into the four-lane highway, smooth, night-dark, uncluttered by much traffic.

  "Well, I never saw so many crumby people in my life."

  "That place was a little too much," Edith admitted. She turned her coat collar up around her neck. "That tawdry little thing at the bar. One felt she was crawling with germs."

  She hadn't made herself clear, and it seemed important to explain. "It wasn't those," she said. "I thought they didn't know any better, they never had a chance to be any other way. It was the ones at the party. They didn't even seem to want to grow up." Yet it was the drinkers at Marie's Place, she realized, who had crystallized and shaped her dislike for their more ornate counterparts from The Bluff. "I know I'm not explaining this very well."

  "You certainly aren't." Edith's tone was rimmed with frost. "You sound like a women's magazine. Part of the campaign against us. We certainly aren't anything like those poor creatures. We're—"

  "Different."

  A hurt silence.

  In the small dim light from the dash she looked at Edith's profile. For the first time she looked tired and vulnerable, not young any more. Joyce laid a hand on her arm, lightly, not to disturb her driving. "Let's not quarrel with each other. Let's go home and get some sleep."

  Edith sighed. "We might as well, if you're determined to be unreasonable."

  I wish there were somebody I could talk to about this, Joyce thought. The image of a boy's face flew across her mind, high cheek
bones and a mouth set in patient lines. She stirred on the seat, feeling cramped and chilled and lonelier than ever.

  Chapter 18

  On the afternoon of December first she came out of the Ad. Building into the chilly dusk of five o'clock, to find John Carstairs Jones waiting beside the path as he had waited at the dormitory, a couple of weeks earlier. He stood there smiling a little, although every girl who came down the steps with an armful of books was giving him a good looking-over. She dropped her notebook. He stooped to pick it up. "You said you'd call up," she accused him.

  "Well, if you insist I can go back downtown and find a pay booth. You're taking an awful chance, though," John said. "Those drugstore girls are mighty good-looking."

  "I'm glad to see you, silly." And she was, unexpectedly; if he had called she'd have looked forward to the meeting with nothing but apprehension, but his sudden appearance gave her a good feeling of warmth.

  "It must be true about absence making the heart grow. How about going downtown for dinner?"

  "Then wait while I change my clothes."

  She wished she had changed to a date dress, when they ended up at the Henderson Hotel instead of a drugstore counter or dog wagon. The hotel was nothing fancy, but it was the best the town had to offer, unless you were old and well-heeled and speedy enough for a membership in the Sportsman's Lodge. John said he wasn't any of those things, thank God, he'd rather be broke and have his own teeth even if hamburger was all they had to work on. He hung her jacket on the old-fashioned coatrack in a corner of the big, empty dining room and pulled out her chair with a flourish. "Onion soup's the thing to have. They make it like the French do and it smells so good."

  Words crowded together in her mind. It didn't make sense, there was no reason why she should tell this boy anything, but that was the way it was. The soup came in big plates, with bread crusts in it and grated cheese odorous on top, but she couldn't eat until she got rid of the weight on her chest. She picked up her spoon and turned it over, looking at the silver smith's mark in order not to meet his eyes. "You apologized to me the other day," she §aid in a small high voice. "I have to apologize to you too. I guess you're right; I am a case of arrested development."

  "Come on, tell."

  "You'll hate me."

  John said, "I couldn't hate you, not even if you murdered somebody."

  "Edith Bannister. You know, the—"

  He made a gesture of cutting off, the hand brought down sharp and level. "You don't have to say it," he said. He sounded weary. "Look, I might as well level with you. Uncle Doc told me." He grinned at her look of shocked surprise. "He'd guessed about her."

  Bad as Mary Jean's knowing had been, this was worse. She couldn't look at him. She concentrated on the old-fashioned damask tablecloth, lilies and tulips alternating in the woven pattern. John began eating soup, as if to spare her feelings by looking elsewhere. "What difference does it make?" he asked.

  "I don't know why I'm telling you all these horrible things. It's none of your business."

  "We belong together," John said. He shook his head. "Lord knows I never planned it this way. I've got two more years of college to work through before I can even think about medical school."

  "Love at first sight," she said scornfully. "Fate and all that stuff."

  "I knew that first day, out in the woods. It didn't have anything to do with being mad at you. I was sure enough mad at you."

  Tears rose to her eyes. "This makes me feel terrible."

  John patted her hand. His touch was light but curiously alive. "Because you did it or because somebody knows about it? Look—just play like I'm the old family analyst. Give. You'll feel better."

  "I don't know," Joyce said. She was ashamed, and yet it was easier to struggle for honesty with him sitting there. The confused thinking of the last few weeks, the need to be free of a relationship become distasteful, at grips with habit and the dread of loneliness, took on sharper outlines because he was listening. She shot a timid look at him. "It was wonderful at first. I couldn't keep my mind on anything else. Now I don't even like it. Yet I can't give it up." She blinked. "Sometimes I think I'm going crazy," she said.

  "That's life," John said. "That's love. Falling in is fun, falling out's pure hell. Happens all the time." He finished his soup, tipping the plate. "It's that empty feeling that gets you."

  "This is different."

  "It's always different."

  The waiter came and took away John's empty plate and, looking disappointed, her full one. He brought steak on thick hot platters and a whole armada of little vegetable dishes which he grouped carefully in front of them. They sat silent, waiting for him to go away. Joyce could feel her accelerated heartbeat and the jerking of the pulse in her throat against the high collar of her wool sweater.

  John leaned across the table and laid a hand on her arm. "Be honest with yourself, kid. If you're getting any real satisfaction out of it, then okay. I can wait for you to grow up. But if you're past it, then for God's sake put it behind you and move on. Only don't try to kid yourself."

  "It's not just me. I couldn't let her down. Everybody's down on people like that anyway."

  "Not half as much as they're down on normal people," John said, "That's a lot of hooey, that propaganda they give you, how persecuted they are. Most people simply feel sorry for queers. They're sort of handicapped, like somebody with an artificial leg." He pondered. "More. An artificial leg doesn't have to handicap a person."

  "That's it. You're going to think I'm abnormal or something."

  "Look," John said patiently, "you're nothing but a kid. You needed to feel safe and cared-for." He cut into his steak, releasing a little cloud of steam. "Hell, everybody's looking for that. I always figured on ending up with some deep-chested, motherly type myself—make up for not having a mother of my own when I was a little kid. Sure got things screwed up when you came along."

  "I'm trying to tell you it was more than that."

  "But that too. It's all mixed up together. I don't blame you," he said in an angry voice. "I blame her, though. God, she could have picked somebody her own size."

  "She didn't mean to hurt me."

  He swallowed hard. "I guess that's right. She's probably lonesome too. Lord, imagine being like that. Getting old like that. Like riding a merry-go-round, all the time getting off at the same place where you got on." He shook his head. "Gosh."

  She said almost at random, "Aren't you ever shocked?"

  "Only by fakes. You can't go around telling other people everything you know; it would be illegal; But listen, don't you ever let me catch you lying to yourself. Or to me, either."

  "I’ll probably never see you again."

  He cut a strip of steak and chewed on it absently. 'Don't talk foolishness," he said after he had swallowed.

  The meat and the garnishing onions and mushrooms smelled good. She picked up her knife, then put it down.

  "What's the matter?" John demanded.

  "I'm sorry. You'll have to pay for it just the same."

  "They'd be glad to have it in Korea."

  "You weren't in Korea!"

  He sighed. "Nineteen when I went in, twenty when they brought me out. Froze two toes off—real romantic."

  She looked into her water glass. He went on eating, alternating meat and mushrooms with bits of vegetable. He wiped his mouth on the napkin and looked her way. "Feel better now?"

  "About—"

  "Telling me. It was a bright idea."

  "Some." Tears hung on her eyelashes, .but it was true, she did feel better. "Yes, I do. That's funny, isn't it?"

  "Cathartic value of confession. Would you eat some dessert if I ordered it?"

  "No."

  "Suppose you broke it off, would she make any trouble for you?"

  "How do you mean, trouble?"

  "Have you expelled. Start a dirty rumor. Throw nitric acid in your eyes like that girl in the paper whose boy friend jilted her. You said you did some typing evenings for her—do
you need the money?"

  She shook her head. "She fixed that up so we could get together. My mother sends me money all the time."

  Yes, and that was a silly thing too. When she was a kid, she had supposed it was only money that kept Mimi from sending for her. Now a check came twice a month, with Mimi's married name printed on it, and she deposited it with the bursar and left it there. She didn't need money, except maybe thirty or forty cents for a soda or something. It didn't mean as much as the colored postcards used to. Must be close to a hundred dollars there, she thought, if I ever need it.

  "How is your mother, anyhow?" As if he really cared, as if he wasn't just changing the subject to make her feel better.